Stop the Great Lakes nuclear dump

Do something great for Canada Water Week, March 18-24

Nuclear waste dump fact sheet

1. Ontario Power Generation (OPG), a multi-billion dollar corporation wholly owned by the Province of Ontario, plans to build a nuclear waste dump at the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant site, in the Municipality of Kincardine, Ontario, located approximately one kilometer inland from the shore of Lake Huron at the surface and more than 400 metres below the deepest near-site point of Lake Huron. OPG owns all Ontario’s nuclear plants and all radioactive nuclear waste created.

2. Low and intermediate level radioactive nuclear waste will be buried in the nuclear waste dump. Intermediate level nuclear wastes are highly radioactive and many remain toxic for over 100,000 years. Some are as dangerous as nuclear spent fuel. No scientist or geologist can provide a 100,000-year guarantee that this nuclear waste dump will not leak.

3. Approval of the nuclear waste dump in the Municipality of Kincardine (DGR1, Deep Geologic Repository) will set precedents (toxicity of waste, proximity to lake, geology) and smooth the way for the much publicized second underground nuclear waste dump for the high level nuclear spent fuel involving 21 communities (DGR2). Kincardine’s DGR1 is the Trojan Horse in our midst.

4. OPG is paying $35.7 million to Saugeen Shores, Huron-Kinross, Arran-Elderslie, Brockton, Kincardine. All are adjacent to the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant site; $10.5 million has already been paid even before approval to construct the dump is received. OPG can unilaterally cancel payment if the municipality fails to support the nuclear waste dump proposal. http://tinyurl.com/b2qtcya/

6. OPG’s Environmental Impact Statement document contains 3,432 pages; justification for choosing the Kincardine site is contained in the equivalent of one single page. OPG’s comment on acceptability of an alternative site option: “Unknown.” http://tinyurl.com/av6jexb

7. An underground nuclear waste dump in limestone is unproven and unprecedented.

9. OPG’s proposal is presently undergoing an Environmental Assessment (EA). Public hearings are expected [this] spring. EA Joint Review Panel will report to the federal Minister of the Environment, who in turn will report to the Canadian federal cabinet, the ultimate decision maker – a decision is anticipated within nine months. [March is the assumed end date of the Environmental Impact Statement review period. Summer 2013: Joint Review Panel for the Environmental Assessment Public Hearing hears views about the Environmental Impact Statement and application for a site licence to construct the dump. Submissions will be heard from the public, Aboriginal groups OPG and other stakeholders.]

10. Nuclear waste will be buried in the dump over a 35 to 40 year period. Ten years of pre-closure monitoring to be followed by unmonitored, unspecified institutional control and then abandonment.

11. In the words of Rod McLeod, a former Deputy Minister of the Environment (Ontario) “… the OPG proposal is very unwise.” http://tinyurl.com/amoepsw/, Petitioner comment #960.

12. According to William Fyfe, a retired University of Western Ontario professor and an international consultant on nuclear waste, “You do not put nuclear waste near things like the Great Lakes or the great rivers in case there’s a leakage that you haven’t expected.” http://tinyurl.com/arggzco/

13. OPG states, “Taking into account the findings of the EA studies, including the identified mitigation measures, it is OPG’s conclusion that the DGR Project is not likely to result in any significant adverse effects on the environment.” http://tinyurl.com/av6jexb/

14. Forty million affected Canadians and Americans situated throughout the Great Lakes Basin that can and will be impacted if things go wrong were not consulted or informed and receive nothing but risk and uncertainty.

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Please add your voice to the growing list of North Americans opposing Ontario Power Generation’s plan to bury nuclear waste on the shores of Lake Huron. Sign our petition and encourage friends, family and others in your network to sign it as well at http://tinyurl.com/aljc9so

One comment

So what are you going to do with the low and medium level wastes from your nuclear power plants? Dump it on some native bands in northern Saskatchewan? They are already having to cope with all the waste from the extraction process. Now they get all the benefits of the spents. WTF is up with that?

Now if you want to see a real interesting map, lets see one with all the nuclear plants and other processing facilities in the Great Lakes Basin vs. the number of the same in all those areas outside the drainage, especially in Sask where the ore came from.